Meg Mason

This is emotionally difficult to read. I was honestly ready to give up halfway through. Am I glad I finished it? Meh. Glad enough to give it 3.5 stars. Reading it is like watching an impending train wreck: You know that it’s going to be bad, that there will be tons of carnage, and, really, you just want to close your eyes and find out if everyone is going to be okay. There are lots of rave reviews for this book, so it may have been the wrong time for me—because I thought I’d enjoy this one much more than I did. The writing is authentic and quick-paced, the characters are witty and dysfunctional, but it just missed the higher marks on my lit-fic-loving meter.

Martha, a 40-year-old food writer, has an undefined mental illness that impacts all aspects of her life—obviously—to the breaking point of her husband, Patrick, leaving her shortly after her fortieth birthday. The majority of the book is told in sequential flashbacks from her childhood, outlining the close relationship she has with her snarky sister in contrast to the cold relationship she has with her dysfunctional mother, to her crumbling present day, moving back into her childhood home. Through the flashbacks, there’s a roadmap mired in bleakness and frustration where we watch Martha navigate the land mines of this disease, struggling with not being “normal” and not having any control over her emotions and not being free of harmful thoughts.… (plus d'informations)

Sorrow and Bliss is a smiling through tears kind of book - heartbreakingly sad one minute and laugh out loud funny the next.

Super close sisters Martha (the clever one) and Ingrid (boobs and babies) share a bohemian upbringing with mum, minorly important sculptor and drinker Celia Barry predominantly locked away in her repurposing shed, and dad, study-bound poet Fergus Russell struggling with his long overdue anthology when not packing his bags. All-night parties, half-finished projects and grilled pork chops are the norm until a little bomb goes off in Martha’s brain when she is seventeen.

Meg Mason manages to temper serious issues (the different specialists, different diagnoses, different advice and different prescriptions; the stigma and discrimination attached to mental illness and its consequences; the devastating effect on both the afflicted and their loved ones; depression and dysfunction) with humour (full-on family festivities with Aunt Winsome, all things Jonathan Parker, text emojis - aubergine, cherries and open scissors!) and tender, heartfelt moments (alphabet stories, shared strips of comfort flannel, the meaning of motherhood and the lost little boy that was Patrick) as we follow Martha on her journey of self discovery.

A totally immersive, extremely moving and thought-provoking read.
Soul-searching, sad and smiley.… (plus d'informations)